Hello everyone, The time is now. The steering committee for the mascot and colors has opened up a survey to everyone. Community members, faculty, staff, students, and alumni! If we intent to SAVE BUCKY. We need everyone and I mean EVERYONE to voice their opinion on this. The survey is still ambiguous as it doesn't present a defined option to retain Broncs name. However!! You can initially select the ability to "Compromise" to preserve legacies of the existing institutions. I have been told if you want to KEEP BRONCS.. you MUST click on this option. I'm not in agreement, but those are the options as they stand now. You will then be presented with alternate options...They are Pheonix, Vaqueros, Green Jays, Storm and NONE OF THE ABOVE. I'm not going to tell you which of these to vote for However, it is in our best interest to vote NONE OF THE ABOVE. This Survey must be completed by Next Wednesday. Please don't waste anytime and please share with as many people as you can to voice their opinion as well. You can vote multiple times, but will need to use different computers to do so. You can access the site at UTPA.edu or UTRGV.edu and click on the image. If you need help finding the survey visit the Facebook page or e-mail me directly at IAMABRONC@gmail.com. Click here and it will take you straight there https://jfe.qualtrics.com/form/SV_51j92SotBqZDBLT We need EVERYONE to do this. This may be our last shot at making our voices heard before a decision will be reached. Do not wait, and do not let it go by the way side. Please complete survey ASAP. We are still raising money for the campaign: You can do so here https://www.crowdrise.com/savebucky We are using money for Facebook ads and other ideas potentially bumper stickers and fan bracelets. Please donate what you can. All remaining funds will go straight to the Bronc Athletic Fund. I would also like for people to share their responses on the FB page... IF you are looking for some ideas on what to comment.. Mine is below. Keep spreading the word! Thanks for all of your support so far. Sincerely, Alex Del Barrio #savebucky #GoBroncs #NoneoftheAbove "our request above is interesting because it says, athletics image; and legacies of both institutions. The word compromise is misplaced, because if we are talking about legacies, true legacies; there is really only one option. Broncs. Because the birth of UT Brownsville was as a member of UT-Pan American. Their "athletic" legacy originated with us until 1991; when their athletic legacy became intertwined with the Scorpion of Texas Southmost College which lives on. My comments below will detail the need to preserve Bronc. I am of the belief that no "compromise" is necessary and the Broncs should remain in the Green, White and Orange color scheme is preserved. Here are the detailed reasons why. 1. This is a separate issue than that of the name of the school. The brand that represents our athletic program, is the primary function of the mascot. UT-RGV in every legal way has been able to begin as a school having an NCCA Division 1 program because: a) they are keeping the NCAA membership, b)WAC membership, c)retaining Division 1 status All as a result of being UT-Pan American and it being the continuation of an existing program. The athletic programs will be housed in Edinburg as Brownsville has no athletic facilities of their own. Their NAIA program is being dissolved. In addition all records, championships and accomplishments will be preserved within the Division 1 program. 2. If you want to speak about Legacy, why don't we remind UT-Brownsville that it was once Pan American College at Brownsville and later UTPA at Brownsville. They were once Broncs. Later in their partnership with Texas Southmost College, those alumni were Scorpions. The Scorpion is the real legacy brand for those alumni, why wouldn't they want to preserve that? Because it still exists. So they created Ocelot, a legacy that destroyed a very successful junior college baseball program, and had to lease all of their athletic facilities from another institution. Not to mention it has been made very clear that TSC would like to re-start junior college athletics under the scorpion name. The legacy of the mascot that means something to Brownsville IS SURVIVING. The Bronc should not die as a result of that. That community will keep a legacy brand in the Scorpion. What "legacy" does a mascot who a majority of the alumni don't identify with actually have? Their alumni won't believe in any suitable compromise. If we are just talking brands which exist for representing athletic teams, the scorpion will live on. The ocelot is much too young to have a full graduating class let alone a legacy will dissolve, and the Broncs will have to change? Their community gets to preserve a brand that is meaningful, and ours (much more meaningful) has to die, even though they are using our facilities, our coaches, our players and recruits, our division 1 classification, or history and our conference membership? Not to mention our fundraising dollars!! 3. UTPA has already compromised enough. We compromised our name. The name didn't have to be new. Pan American itself means being inclusive to everyone. We regressed to a name of regional identification. In the same case we had to abandon the beacon of higher education in our community as a result of wanting to "compromise" . 4. What would be a suitable compromise here? There isn't one. Would keeping a third color of navy in the color scheme really mean anything to the current UTB students. The Broncs have always been the Valley's team. From South Padre Island all the way to Rio Grande City. The footprint of the Bronc brand ha always represented that far. We are the only NCAA Division 1 program south of Corpus Christi. The Mid-Valley and Upper Valley and Lower Valley all identified with the Broncs. It represents the entire community. 5. They've changed their mascot three times in their history. We never have despite several name changes. We have always and always should be the Broncs. 6. It would be severely handicap the phenomenal work Chris King has done in his tenure to rebrand the Bronc name. His phenomenal job of reinvigorating the connection to athletics. Not to mention the amount of money he's raised to renovate our facilities, and bring money into the program that was never there before. It wasn't coming from student fees or anywhere else. It came from his dedication to re-invigorating the program. 7. Who made the decree that a new mascot was needed in the first place? We were fed reasons as to why the school name needed to change. Why the mascot? If we were choosing one athletic program to move forward with, (those that wear the brand on a daily basis to represent the school) and it was UTPA's why should their emblem be changed? If a compromise must be reached then I say that the Bronc name, colors, and remain. However, since the Pan American baseball logo will no longer exists the "PA' should be replaced with a simple "B" in a similar font, colored in white. Outlined in Blue and green. Blue would be the tertiary color of the school, much like yellow is a tertiary color of the Houston Rockets and used to connect the current Rockets to its championship legacy. The B can represent, Broncs, Brownsville, Brotherhood, Bridge, Bliss, Beach, Birth, Betrothal. It will be this simple, B logo that will end up on hats and a prominent secondary logo on all uniforms and fan shirts. Keep our bucking Broncs... but let us make the B stand for something that invites our (B)rothers from (B)rownsville as we invite them to once again (B)ecome (B)roncs again. I (B)elieve this is the way to successfully (B)ridge the gap. In doing that we could have every single athletic team have an "alternate uniform" Schools like Oregon and Maryland have made having third uniforms popular. You could guarantee wearing this jersey a few times a season including on an appreciation night for the Brownsville community. That third jersey could be primarily navy in color. The weight of the Bronc legacy is too strong to ignore, by doing the above things like adding the "B" logo and a third uniform with a NAVY color. I think this helps connect to Brownville all while retaining the existing legacy of the Bronc name and bucking bronc logo with Green and (Orange) as existing colors. " Alex Del Barrio